“If the thing is to do,” he muttered, “ ‘twere best that it be done soon.”
For if it were not done soon then it might not be done at all. Human courage and human despair have their limitations and life, even twisted and bitter, hateful and painful—life can be sweet, even though the sweetness be of bitter aloes and dead sea dust.
And he was but human.
Reluctantly he pressed his thumb to the lock, feeling a last flash of hope as he stepped into the warm, softly lit interior then, as he realized the room was empty, felt the sagging onrush of despair.
Tomorrow would be too late.
Tomorrow he would have aged a little too much, would have lost his courage, would have discovered that today’s unbearable was tomorrow’s acceptable. He had seen it before. He had seen the broken, decrepit things that once had been bright-eyed men, strong and with the clear vision of youth, had seen them huddled in their shame as they strove to cling to a life which had become a nagging burden. Tomorrow he too could be like that, hoping against hope, running a futile race against time, senile, teetering on the edge of insanity, his fine co-ordination and trained reflexes, lost beneath a welter of petty fears and niggling doubts.
Then death would be a hateful thing. Then the thought of oblivion would fill him with screaming dread and he would shrink, enjoying the pain that meant life, blind and deaf to sane counsel and the advice of intelligence.
A thing of which to be ashamed.
A thing which he had sworn he would never become— and yet? Was there still time?
The room was locked, empty, and he was alone and, looking around him, he knew that time was running out in more senses than one.
For this was the last day of his summer and he was still alive.
He sank into a chair, staring dully at the dark bowl of the sky beyond the high windows, not seeing the flash and glare of the slender ships as they rose toward space, not seeing the faded stars, the immensity of the universe, seeing only himself and what he would become. For a moment self-pity gnawed at his strength and almost he yielded to it, feeling the easy, emotionless tears of age blur his vision and sting his eyes. Then he recovered and stared about the glowing beauty of the room.
Here were his treasures and, in a sense, here was his life. Here were his memories, the little things, the trifles and yet each with its own association with the past. A statue, he reached for it and let his thumb travel with almost sensuous pleasure over the polished stone, a fragment hardly worth the price of a meal, and yet he had carried it with him for uncounted millions of miles. There a ring, a gift later returned, a gift which, if accepted would have changed the course of his entire life.
For a moment he felt the old pain, the shattering of cynicism and felt a faint regret that now, in this last day, he was alone.
And yet he would not have had it otherwise.
Loneliness was something he had lived with too long to fear now. And he could bear it until he died—if he died. The thought made him sweat, a thin film of glistening moisture over the too-soft skin, and his hand trembled a little as he reached for the bottle of rare old brandy. Death, something he had wanted, something he had paid for, something he had expected all day. Not natural death, that would come and its approach was a thing he dreaded and feared accompanied as it would be by accelerated senility and gibbering insanity. But clean, sweet, merciless death, unknown, immediate, a clean cutting off and a neat finish.
The only way to avoid the winter.
He had arranged it and the Bureau of Euthanasia had never been known to fail. He had tasted the sights and sounds, the sensuous pleasures of good food and good wine, the sight of familiar scenes and the visiting of familiar places for what he had imagined to be the last time. He had ignored the assassin who would be watching his every move, discounting what must come until nerve and sinew could deny his knowledge no longer, until anticipation hovered on the verge of being replaced by fear, and the terrible dread of having to reaffirm his intention once the night had passed.
He knew that he could never do it again.
Liquid sunshine poured from the bottle into the swollen glass. Automatically he warmed it between his palms, unable to desecrate the fluid gold even in his extremity of emotion and, as he inhaled the glorious bouquet, he smiled as an artist might smile or as a man to whom has been given one of the rare pleasures of the earth.
He had always appreciated good wine.
He sipped, letting the nectar drift over his tongue and sting his palate with its familiar taste. He sipped again then, as the glass slipped from his fingers and oblivion came with time but for a single thought, he smiled.
The assassin had been something more than just a killer.
He had been a gentleman.
ONE ORDINARY DAY, WITH PEANUTS
by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is a witch, she says. A white witch, I believe she claims. That’s as may be; in this book she represents the forces of evil. All these other fellas, knocking themselves out, trying to figure What To Do About It All? and this Jackson comes along, takes a good look at the same messy situation, and says distinctly—and distinctively—
“Nuts!”
Peanuts, of course
Mr. John Philip Johnson shut his front door behind him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn’t the sun warm and good, and didn’t his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn’t the world just a wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on the corner and bought his paper, saying “Good morning” with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child’s mother looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.
When he had gone several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and, touching his hat civilly, said, “Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy for you?”